Sarawak Report
Oh, dear. I see that authorities in yet another country have been sniffing around the family assets connected to Jamilah Taib-Murray, the prominent Rockcliffian and Canada’s wealthiest woman ($1.2 B). Jamilah is also the eldest daughter of Abdul Taib Mahmud, the obscenely wealthy Chief Minister of the Malaysian province of Sarawak.

Two years ago, the RCMP, FINTRAC and the PMO received letters from the Bruno Manser Fund. The Swiss-based environmentalist NGO alleged that some of Daddy Taib’s fortune—he’s worth $15 billion!–had sloshed through the family holdings in Canada. Those holdings include the Ottawa-based multi-billion dollar Sakto real estate empire, owned and operated by Jamilah and hubby Sean Murray. The Attorney General of Switzerland recently came up empty on another Bruno Manser money hunt. The Swiss A-G revealed the Taib family had no loot squirreled away in any of the country’s famously discreet banks. He did note, however, that two members of the large, world-spanning and suspiciously wealthy Taib clan had withdrawn all their dough in 1999.

Similar investigations in Germany and the UK have also so far failed to produce the cash BMF alleges Taib has stashed in overseas accounts from various Malaysian adventures, notably the rapacious clear-cutting of Sarawak’s rainforest. Malaysia has the second-highest rate of capital flight in the world, much of the booty shifting through Singapore and Hong Kong to far-flung numbered accounts.Be-jewelled

Based in Ottawa, Jamilah and Sean, through a web of highly successful companies, administer a real estate empire in Canada, the U.S., Australia and the U.K. Jewels in their crown include the Ontario Attorney General’s office on Preston Street in Ottawa, the Abraham Lincoln Building – the FBI’s Seattle HQ, and the Adelaide Hilton Hotel. Sean, of the Rockcliffe Murrays (Uncle Patrick of Murray and Murray Architects, is former mayor of the village), met Jamilah when he attended Ashbury College with her brother, Mahmud (class of ’82.) Jamilah was at Elmwood.

When they dated at Carleton University, Jamilah’s classmates in business management knew her as as “the Princess.” No one was surprised when she bought Sean a red Mercedes convertible for his birthday. They married in 1987 and Sean changed his name to Mohamad Nor Hisham Murray — and converted to Islam in deference to Jamilah’s family. The Ottawa Petfinder has often slavered over the fabulous parties thrown at their swish 688 Manor Avenue digs (assessed at $9.9 million and rising, the second-most exorbitant pile in Rockcliffe). Less respectful media have offered endless speculation about the origins of Jamilah’s billion-dollar personal fortune. According to her father, Jamilah made her dough through her remarkable business acumen. Her money is totally unrelated to his eye-popping wealth in the old country. (Daddy makes annual trips to Ottawa to visit his daughter and grandchildren, and check out local antique stores. Accompanied by a large breasted bodyguard a la Muammar Gaddafi, Daddy sweeps into the local shops, waves his gold-tipped swagger stick and loads up on thousands of dollars worth of bric-a-brac.)

Over the past 30 years, Daddy Taib has amassed an estimated $15 billion through family-owned companies with an uncanny knack for scoring state resource rights and development contracts. And he’s done it all on his chief minister’s salary of less than $200,000 per annum. Taib’s charming old-world ways of doing business have been the subject of much uncharitable construction.